Thursday, April 04, 2019

Some people think it has no utility. Other people have pretty reasoned arguments about how gold maintains purchasing power across the centuries.

It was in a bubble eight years ago that sucked a lot of people in. There were some sketchball commercials for gold on Fox News. The people who missed the bubble spent the next eight years mocking the people who got sucked into it.

Friday, August 04, 2017

BY OLIVIER GARRET : The US has become a very unfriendly place for successful people.

Not just for the uber wealthy, but entrepreneurs, investors, and the family next door. Anyone with even a modest net worth is a potential target.

Our country has just 5% of the world’s population yet is home to 80% of its lawyers. The US spends 2.2% of its GDP on legal costs. That is an eight-fold jump per capita (inflation adjusted) since the 1950s.

Tuesday, October 06, 2015

Managing an investment portfolio is a very personal matter. Consequently, the most important consideration is to design a portfolio that meets your own unique goals, objectives and risk tolerances. Everyone is different, and consequently, every investment portfolio can and should be appropriately different as well. Stated more straightforwardly, I do not believe in cookie-cutter or one-size-fits-all approaches to portfolio design.

In the same vein, I believe that investment portfolios, especially retirement investment portfolios, should be designed and constructed to meet the specific needs of the individual it is built for. In some cases the objective might be current income and safety. In other cases the objective might be the necessity to earn the highest possible rate of return. Importantly, the most appropriate objective for each individual will often be driven by factors that are external to the portfolio itself.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

There are only a handful of ways to protect your investment portfolio, and proper diversification is chief among them. No matter how well you do your due diligence on a single investment or how disciplined you are at executing trades, if your portfolio looks like a bridge party among pals who’ve known each other just a tad too long you’re in trouble.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Have you ever wondered what really happens behind the scenes at a rock concert? My good friend Stew is a top audio engineer—you know, the guy who wears thousand-dollar headphones and stands below the stage manning dials at rock concerts the world over. I shadowed him backstage a handful of times, and the scene was not what I thought it would be. Sure, they all dressed the rocker part, but I was blown away by everyone’s professionalism.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Alexander Green writes: Virtually every American knows Uncle Sam is carrying a gargantuan debt and that we face sharply higher deficits in the future. What you may not know is how bad the situation really is, how much worse it will soon become, how widespread the problem around the world, and how little will be done about it anytime soon.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

In a previous article found here I postulated that the S&P 500 was currently fairly valued. In this article, I review a specific hand-selected list of Dividend Champions that I believe are reasonably priced and therefore capable of generating above-average returns at below-average risk. In today’s low interest rate environment, I believe that high-quality blue-chip dividend growth stocks represent an attractive asset class that can provide a retirement portfolio with a growing income stream.

Saturday, November 03, 2012

Diversification of your investments is the only real free lunch, or so we are told. But how do we go about deciding what to diversify into? In this week’s short Outside the Box, my friend Jason Hsu of Research Affiliates argues that the real basis for diversification should be risk. And given that risk seems to be rising everywhere we look, thinking about how to deal with risk in our portfolios makes a great deal of sense.

I’m also including in today’s OTB a complementary piece by good friend Charles Gave of GaveKal. This is a short piece that is long on common sense and that winds up with a straightforward list of places where we can invest to minimize risk.

Friday, May 11, 2012

The old adage that people got to eat apply to the five consumer staple companies covered in this report. From the farm to the table these companies provide sustenance to a hungry world. Therefore, we believe that conservative investors that are craving the opportunity for growth and income might want to look closer at these five consumer staples. Each appears to be reasonably priced, and the group provides various combinations of growth and yield.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Keith Fitz-Gerald writes:
As you might imagine, I receive a lot of questions from readers around the world and right now the question I'm being asked most frequently is, "How much cash should I be holding?"

There's no right answer, but given the extraordinary times we're living in, I think the more interesting thing to consider is "what to do with it?"

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Keith Fitz-Gerald writes:
One night at dinner a few years back, my Dad, Greg Fitz-Gerald, explained exactly why the "tax-takers" in Washington think that recoveries, bailouts, negotiations and stimulus packages are a good idea - while the taxpayers believe just the opposite.

"When you rob Peter to pay Paul, Paul generally thinks this is a good idea," he said.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Keith Fitz-Gerald writes:
I've lectured on investment strategies the world over, but I recently got one of the most intriguing questions I've been asked in a long time at the Global Currency Expo in San Diego, California.

An attendee asked me: "Is it possible to achieve decent performance if I don't want to include stocks?"

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